I should encourage all my students to read Paul Graham's Hiring is Obsolete op-ed:

"The three big powers on the Internet now are Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. Average age of their founders: 24. So it is pretty well established now that grad students can start successful companies. And if grad students can do it, why not undergrads?"...

Ultra-thin client to close digital divide | The Register

"The Nivo (network in, video out) box is a sub-£100, ultra-ultra-thin client that can be networked along with several others to a central PC/server. It is cheaper, more accessible and more environmentally friendly than a PC, Ndiyo argues, needing much less in the way of raw materials to build, and consuming far less power. It is also based on non-proprietary standards and open source software."...

In addition to The Register article Ndiyo! - The Ndiyo Project has more details.

I'd like to add my own parable on the occasion of Dave Winer's fiftieth birthday today [link]. This parable is in the same vein as Seth's Dave Winer's Software, Users, and Fiftieth Birthday post and Emmanuel's reply.

There is no doubt that Dave's impact on me is primarily as a result of Frontier and it's content management framework which I still use to this day. Not forgetting of course that this technology partly underpins Seth's superb implementation of Conversant.

But Dave's links and opinions on Scripting News have also had a significant influence. A search of Duncan's Jotter for 'Scripting News' currently yields more than 130 citations!

So many happy returns from one 50-year-old to another Dave. We may have had disagreements in the past - a Semi-colonic Irritation springs to mind ;-) - but there's no doubting your contribution to the sum total of human endeavour.

So Dave here's to your next 50 years!! Very best wishes.